Lindquist's second athletic life might be better than her first
By JOHN SCHWARB
Published August 8, 2004
Barb Lindquist has it pretty good. Three-days-a-week swimming schedules sound like the game plan of a recreational triathlete, not the world's No.1.
Yet that sport, the first leg of the triathlon, comes easy to Lindquist. By combining it with six days a week running and working on the bike - that's more like it for a full-time pro - she's become a mainstay at the top of the world rankings and the favorite for a gold medal in Athens.
"I've got the complete package," she said earlier this summer in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "It's wild to think I'm a better triathlete than a swimmer."
Lindquist has risen to the top of the sport in a second athletic life, though the first helped. The 35-year-old was a world-class swimmer more than a decade ago, winning multiple medals at the Pan Am Games and helping Stanford to an NCAA title in 1989.
In 1994, she entered her first triathlon on a friend's suggestion. Five years later, she was ranked in the top five and has stayed there since.
Another 35-year-old American with a swimming background, Sheila Taormina, is second in the rankings. The Clermont resident competed in the inaugural triathlon at the 2000 Olympics, finishing sixth. Four years earlier in Atlanta, Taormina won gold in the inaugural women's 4x200-meter freestyle relay.
Susan Williams, the third American woman in triathlon, is not a favorite to medal (she's ranked 33rd), but her pedigree matches her teammates: she's 35 and a former swimmer at Alabama.
MAYBE NOT SO QUIET: Bevan Docherty of New Zealand is known as the "quiet Kiwi," but his brash style on the bicycle has turned heads and helped him rise to the top of the International Triathlon Union world rankings.
In one of his first major international victories at the 2003 St. Kitts International, Docherty broke away on the final hill of the bike leg, tore down the other side and took a 15-second lead on American Doug Friman, which he never lost.
Working on his running was key to becoming a consistent winner, so Docherty did that - while keeping his bike style.
At the World Championships last May in Portugal, Docherty, 27, broke from the main running pack with Spain's Ivan Rana and Dmitry Gaag of Kazakhstan. Gaag eventually dropped back, leaving Rana and Docherty to sprint for gold. With 500 meters to go, the pair shook hands and said, "It's on."
Docherty pulled ahead on the final straightaway to win.
ALSO RUNNING: After finishing 17th at the 2000 Olympics, former Longwood resident Hunter Kemper is a legitimate medal threat. Ranked fifth in the world and tops among U.S. men, Kemper spent the final weeks leading up to Athens working on running.
"That's where the race is won, in my opinion, the last 10 kilometers," he said.
MAN IN THE MIRROR: Andy Potts did not like the reflection in the mirror. Working in corporate sales in Chicago one summer day in 2002, he saw a man who had gained 25 pounds since his days as a U.S. swim team member and who was losing his athletic drive.
Friends suggested triathlon.
Those friends should get free tickets to Athens.
Potts poured himself into the sport, and four months after completing his first triathlon in June 2002, he received an invitation to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. In 2003 he moved to elite status and in May placed 11th in the World Championships to earn a spot on the U.S. team.
If that's not cool enough, Potts married an acrobat in January. Lisa Simes, a former Canadian national team gymnast, now works in Cirque du Soleil's O show in Las Vegas.
- Information from other news organizations was used in this report.
